Why aren't there more tanks in FFXIV?

[Miyaka_Vigiles]

I have been playing as tank around 8 years, most of my MMOs time.

One of the things that was not mentioned here is the acceptance of a new tank (forgive me if it was already mentioned).
You see I played tons of MMOs. To be honest the community tends to be hostile against new tanks, or for better wording they drive new tanks away.

What does this mean?
I ding max lvl in XYZ MMO, get some starter gear and want to start running dungeons to get better gear or badges/coins.
Groups will most prolly not invite you because they dont want to deal with less than average geared tank. If they look past the gear they might not invite you cause you lack the exp, after all you dinged couple weeks ago and just started your end game journey.

Tank mistakes are also much more visible than others, so they are prone to trash talk and harassment/kicking.

As a personal experience, in almost every single MMO I play the hardest period for me is the 1st month right after I ding max lvl.
I have no gear, no achievements, no exp. Unless you are lucky to find a good guild that is willing to "invest" in you, you will have to beg for invites to group.

I learned to endure when these things happened, but for a new tank this will prolly make him quit or re-roll.

Just my 2 cents.

PS: I re-activated my account 2 weeks ago after 6 months break. I had ilvl90 PLD and went through everything I told you again.
Event today as ilvl95 PLD with T8 experience and Ramuh kill, getting groups is not that easy.

[Fated]

I don't enjoy tanking with randoms. Nothing infuriates me more than getting put into a random group with terrible DPS. It's like watching paint dry.

[Kimikryo]

One thing why many people I know really dislike tanking if doing PUG.

People always faulting the tank and being REALLY nasty.

"Hey there potty mouth, I am here to have fun and not to hear you talk about the things you did to my mother and my dog." Was an answer I once seriously had to give.

I don't enjoy tanking with randoms. Nothing infuriates me more than getting put into a random group with terrible DPS. It's like watching paint dry.

Drying paint at least has most of the time a good result. Bad DPS not always clear a dungeon.

[Aldora]

I’ve read both side of the story in this thread (the one from Eliot Lefebvre, followed by the one written by Kaethra Tatrinae).

Personally, i’m more inclined to agree with Eliot Lefebvre’s post then i am with the one written by Kaethra Tatrinae. Let me explain why…

You can say that i’m relatively new tanking, since i’ve only started tanking end game content since December 2013. Till then i was mostly playing with my White Mage and Bard, with 0 experience in tanking and only playing support classes in FFXI.

But, shortly after 2.0 was released, it became quite clear that our Free Company didn’t have a lot of Tanks or people willing to play Tanks. So, in order to help a good friend of mine (who plays Paladin), i decided to pick up tanking.

I started out with a Warrior which i leveled to 50 in 1.x through Guild Leve’s. It was safe to say that i had never learned how to tank and up until then, i never wanted to play a tank because it didn’t suit my play style at all. It was brutal… It didn’t matter what i did, i just couldn’t keep hate. I’ve begged people to slow down so that i can try and figure out what i was doing wrong, but alas. Every single dungeon was a complete mess. Not to mention the amount of stress that came along with it.

By the time i was starting to figure out a few things that would help me hold hate better, the other party members found upgrades for their gear, nullifying all that the progress i’ve made.

I was so fed up not being able to hold hate, that i was ready to call it quits and never tank again.

I was talking about it with that good friend of mine, especially about his experience when it comes to tanking. After a while, we came to the same conclusion that Warrior does not suit me and that i should give the Paladin a shot. As determined as i was, while having the stressful experiences in the back of my head, i picked up my Gladiator and started from the beginning. Going through every dungeon multiple times, figuring out what each skill does, when to use what while talking comparing my findings with my Paladin friend.

We talked about everything. Targeting, positioning, pulling, skill rotations, hate generation, everything. Talking about it with someone does improve your knowledge about the class, but you have to put that knowledge to the test by actually experiencing it and learning from your mistakes by actually being confronted with it.

Tanking with a Gladiator at the lower levels was just as brutal (in some cases even more) then having to tank for people who greatly outclass you with their gear. Leveling it to 50 was a long and bumpy road.

But getting the class to 50 was only the first hurdle in getting to know your class. My “hell” had only just started…

By the time i was level 50 and started running dungeons like Amdapor Keep and Wanderer’s Palace (which were the only level 50 dungeons we had available at that time), i was wearing Darksteel Armor with materia melded into it and wearing the Ifrit blade. However, i was starting to see more and more people sporting their Relic weapons. Some of them even acquired their Zenith weapons.

I was back to square 1 again. Using every trick in the book to try and hold hate. I faired quite a bit better than i did during my Warrior period, because i was more comfortable as a Paladin then i was with the Warrior. Unfortunately, that didn’t lower the amount of stress i got at all.

Soon afterwards, people wanted to speed run both dungeons, wanting me to pull at least 3 time the amount of mobs i was tanking till now. But, it wasn’t just the random people i came across in the DF. Even people from my FC wanted to speed run those dungeons. If i wasn’t fast enough with my pulls, they would pull instead. Having me chase them all over.

You have no idea how many times i’ve asked or even begged people to slow down, because i couldn’t keep up… Unfortunately, most of the time it fell on deaf ears. I was “left” on my own to solve my own problems.

Fast forward to December 2013, i was asked by my Paladin friend if i wanted to join their Coil static, since they were in need of a 8th member. I started out tagging along with my Bard, but when i reached Turn 4 they asked me if i would mind switching my class to tank and fulfill the Off Tank role in the party.

Tanking Coil left me shaking and out of breath, each time i did it. But, I didn’t want to let them down, so i gave it my all to improve my tanking skills up to a level where i could tank Turn 4. It took us 2 sessions in order to clear Turn 4. I got praised for picking up Coil as fast as i did, since they were stuck at Turn for several weeks before.

Personally? I didn’t feel any special about it (far from it), because i had to work my ass off to keep up in each turn.

Ever since i’ve joined the static in December, i’ve been playing Paladin about 95% of the time. I have most certainly improved my skills, but after almost 10 months of tanking, i still see myself no more than an average tank.

I’m perfectly fine when i’m tanking content at my own pace, but even though i’m the tank, i usually don’t get to decide the pace in which we clear the designated content. If people think that i’m too slow, they will pull ahead of me, trying to speed things up.

After all this time, i’m still having trouble keeping hate from Warriors in an one-on-one battle, or DPS (especially the Black Mages) when battling mob packs. Even if i pull all the stops and do everything i can to the best of my abilities, i still lose hate every once and a while. It’s frustrating and still very stressful.

I can only do so much.

[kuikui]

This just happened to me yesterday and illustrates why people shy away from tanking...Was tanking the newest dungeon (the name escapes me at the moment) when we get a few pulls in and the dps trumps up with "pull everything." I just ignore him and continue to pace the run normally. And what do ya know, he just runs off ahead and comes back with a pack of mobs mid fight. I let him eat dirt for that. Now, here is where all the scenarios about tank hating come to into play...Since I let him die for being a fool, he pipes up with, "wtf why you no tank?" and then it starts...the next 3 or 4 pulls, he just goes off on his own and pulls what he wants. All the while, he's making jabs at me in party chat about me not being able to tank, and how I suck at tanking, blah, blah, blah. I finished the run and moved on, but this kind of thing plays out on a daily basis if anyone dies for any reason, no matter what that reason is.

[Antonio_Xul]

Didn't read the whole thread, but seriously, nobody likes to tank dungeons because people act like jackasses towards them, especially when they are new to a dungeon. There is always going to be a 1st time for a tank in a certain dungeon and people just can't wait for them to learn so they quit right off the bat when we say this is our 1st time or they start complaining and then quit, forcing everyone to re-queue. I haven't done a dungeon in months just due to the awful people who do dungeons. I pay to play and enjoy myself, not to be talked down to by some pencil-necked geek hiding behind a computer or console. I just stick to outside world stuff like story quest, beast quest, relic or hunts (which have been ruined by the whiny dungeoning community). I take my time and don't rush through things to make things last.

One solution I've always mentioned is for Solo Dungeons so we can learn the dungeon before we queue with a group. Either dumb down the mobs for us to solo them or add NPCs to fill out the rest of your party like when doing Class Quest to learn your role during the dungeon. I don't think SE has the balls to do Solo Dungeons, because the Dungeoning community will most likely whine about it and force their hands to not even try, but Solo Dungeons is something I would love to see.

[Doki]

Having played every class to 50 and then some, I would have to rate tanking among the easiest jobs to do. Run up, get initial hate, keep it turned away from group. Losing hate usually only occurs when tanking multiple targets and isn't difficult to get back when playing with DD that use common sense. There's so much room for error with tanking. Very little will one shot you the way it will everyone else. I'll trade huge crit numbers on my screen for surviving everything.

When it comes to overzealous players who demand that you speedrun/pull everything, ignore them. Pull an amount you are comfortable with. As you get better at the job, and get better gear you will eventually be able to handle these sort of pulls without much effort. People fail to realize that speed runs rely on every member. Tank has to use cooldowns right and hold everything, it helps a lot to run in a small line back & forth if the healer is having trouble keeping up since enemies can't all cluster on top of each other and pathing moves them out of melee range sometimes. Healers have to properly keep the tank up while maintaining a mana pool, and most importantly the DDs have to kill it all in a reasonable amount of time before the tank runs out of cooldowns. I find most times a speed run fails is when the DD can't output the necessary damage in time and cooldowns are gone, or when they expect you to be able to immediately pull another huge group before your cooldowns are back. Overall I find the overzealous people that try to force a speed run to be the worst, and often will let them die, especially if it looks like I can do so and still keep the rest of the group alive. Vote kick or leave, there's no reason to put up with them and there are not THAT many players like them.

[MirielleLavandre]

Honestly -- I don't believe there is a lack of tanks. In my FC, about 1/3 of the people regularly on (12 or so people out of 36), have maxed tank jobs. The thing is, they don't ever play these jobs in DF or PUGs. My main is PLD, and I am the same. We just don't want to put up with the way people treat tanks in DF. Like all the examples above, too many people want to speed run and attempt to set the pace of dungeons because they think it is going "too slow". I think all tanks have had the crappy experience of dealing with (usually DPS) players who like to pull for us or rush ahead. Part of it is, I think, the only way for dps to try to stand out in a party is to pull hate -- there really is no other indication that they are doing their job well except for in dps race fights. However, I think this desire to prove their 'worth' by upsetting the aggro table is based solely on ego to the detriment of the whole party. Not enough players understand this concept.

And so, what we actually have is not a lack of tanks -- we have a lack of tanks willing to put up with random players in a Duty Finder queue. I think there are plenty of us out there, but we're all tanking only for friends and FC, or for our books (and even then w/ a FC if possible). That's the reason the player in need is always a 'tank' // it's because we're all out already tanking, just not in the DF.

[Meshico]

I chose warrior as my first job, and I've stuck with it since 1.0 (it was max 33 in 1.0)

and my first really big dungeon where I felt like a bag of pooh was Brayfox!

I thought...well I had a good run, but obviously I'm no bueno at this.

But my friend(s) just told me not to take it personal...and believe it or not, that is all it took for me.

Now i'm just an average tank with average gear, that can hold hate against most Duty Roulette groups, the ones where I lose hate, I like those the most

I pull at the speed I think the group can handle, I'll pull many at first, and if it's too slow, I'll pull less, if I lose hate, I'll pull more lol.

If I die (which happens on occasion) I'll pull less because even though the DD's are there, the healer isn't.

I wouldn't say it's harder or easier than any other job, but I put pressure on myself to be good, so I made it harder on myself

[ErebusXanti]

yes for almost the past couple of weeks when I go in dungeons and stuff tanks either bitch or don't do shit and wait to get kicked off which is funny how some just sit there and don't know they can leave